Calls for papers

 

European Journal of International Management

 

Special Issue on: "Knowledge Management Practices and Cross-Cultural Innovation within Global Contexts"

Guest Editors:
Prof. Manlio Del Giudice and Prof. Rosa Lombardi, University of Rome “Link Campus”, Italy
Prof. Maria Rosaria Della Peruta, Second University of Naples, Italy
Prof. Elias G. Carayannis, George Washington University, USA

Nowadays management scholars emphasise the importance of “context” to analyse more in detail the influence of knowledge and communication on the formation of individual and collective interpretive schemes underlying innovative processes (Holden & Glisby, 2010; Del Giudice et al., 2012). How do entrepreneurs stand up to the global challenge of competition and cooperation? How do managers deal with cross-cultural challenges in the context of innovation management?

The traditional response is that they need to create and encourage both knowledge management practices and diversity in organisational thought and action, within their firms. It is assumed (Tyre and von Hippel, 1997) that most of the knowledge that is useful to solve issues or create innovation is tacit and informal, and is disseminated through interaction, story-telling, and informal processes in action-nets or communal processes. Nevertheless, learning, knowledge and action are not necessarily self-supporting, but depend on the context (Jöstingmeier and Boeddrich, 2007; Murovec and Prodan, 2009). This leads to the observation that knowledge is not uniform within and across organisations.

Such differences have not been sufficiently stressed by organisational and management scholars at an international level of analysis. As Brown and Duguid (2000) have noted, they have often just considered the idea of shared meanings and organisational coherence as given. Yet the capacity to reach shared meanings cannot be understood as a premise but must be considered a consequence of learning activities, which have the purpose of creating an adequate degree of coherence within the organisation (Del Giudice et al., 2013). This, in turn, highlights the importance of thoroughly analysing the idea of ‘cross cultural innovation’ in order to examine the latter as an emergent property that needs to be constantly restored (Rogers and Shoemaker, 1971; Westwood and Low, 2003; Elenkov and Manev, 2005; Bouncken, 2009).

This special issue solicits high-quality papers presenting original research results both on knowledge management and cross-cultural innovation. The topics of interest to the special issue are divided into three main directions, albeit not exclusive:

• Knowledge management inside and across cultures: analysis of the main implications of market and business competitiveness induced by knowledge management practices (mainly from an international point of view);
• Cross-cultural innovation: role of the cultural context for the development of innovation in the national and international scenario (mapping applications for knowledge sharing, case studies, comparative analyses, cross-studies, network analyses, etc.);
• Network relations for stimulating innovation management and cultural intelligence: centrality of culture to all international interactions, importance of the network relations both for knowledge and for culture sharing/transfer.

References

Brown, J.S. & Duguid, P. (2001). "Knowledge and organization: A social-practice perspective", Organization Science, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 198-213.
Bouncken, R.B. (2009), Cultural diversity in innovation teams: surface and deep level effects, International Journal of Business Research, 9(4).
Del Giudice, M., Carayannis, E.G., & Della Peruta, M.R. (2012). Culture and Cooperative Strategies: Knowledge Management Perspectives. In Cross-Cultural Knowledge Management (pp. 49-62). Springer New York.
Del Giudice, M., Della Peruta, M.R., & Carayannis, E. G. (2013). Unpacking Open Innovation: Highlights from a Co-evolutionary Inquiry. Palgrave Macmillan.
Elenkov, D. S., & Manev, I. M. (2005). Top management leadership and influence on innovation: The role of sociocultural context. Journal of management, 31(3), 381-402.
Holden, N.J. & Glisby, M. 2010. Creating knowledge advantage: The tacit dimensions of international competition and cooperation. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press Jöstingmeier, B., & Boeddrich, H.J. (Eds.). (2007). Cross-cultural innovation: new thoughts, empirical research, practical reports. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
Murovec, N., & Prodan, I. (2009). Absorptive capacity, its determinants, and influence on innovation output: Cross-cultural validation of the structural model. Technovation, 29(12), 859-872.
Rogers, E.M., & Shoemaker, F.F. (1971). Communication of Innovations; A Cross-Cultural Approach.
Tyre, M.J. & Von Hippel, E. (1997), "The situated nature of adaptive learning in organizations", Organization Science, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 71-83.
Westwood, R., & Low, D.R. (2003). The multicultural muse culture, creativity and innovation. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 3(2), 235-259.

Subject Coverage
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Implications of cross-cultural innovation on international competition and cooperation
• Knowledge dimensions of global competition
• Tacit dimensions of knowledge sharing and transfer in domestic and global corporations
• Virtual knowledge sharing inside cross-cultural contexts
• Cross-nation innovation management
• Frugal innovation and diversity management: practical applications
• Implications for productivity, efficiency, quality of a cross-cultural approach to innovation management
• Knowledge management practices for international cooperation
• Relationships between IT, KM and entrepreneurism at both national and international level
• Open innovation inside global/cross-cultural contexts
• Adaptive learning within global corporations and cross-cultural contexts
• Networks of knowledge and knowledge clusters
• Enabling technologies and standards for the cross-cultural innovation
• Research and studies on ethnic entrepreneurship: implications for competition, innovation management and
• Quadruple innovation helix model and knowledge management related issues
• Services, applications, and business opportunities of cross-cultural innovations

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper has been completely re-written and if appropriate written permissions have been obtained from any copyright holders of the original paper).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process.

All papers must be submitted online. To submit a paper, please read our Submitting articles page.

Important Dates

Submission of Manuscripts: 20 May, 2016